PG, and Back Again 1

As you’ll already know from regularly reading my blog, I was in Prince George over the past week, visiting Naomi’s parents. We didn’t do a huge number of things, but it was great to spend time with her parents and get to know them a bit better. It was a shame we couldn’t have spent longer there – not only because I didn’t get to shoot anything while I was there! I did get to buy some new skates though, and Naomi got me dressed up in hockey gear when we were in wal-mart. I didn’t get to buy any gear though, so it looks like I’ll have to wait a little longer to join the recreational hockey team in Coventry.

On Saturday we spent all day fixing up our Golf. And when I say all day, I really mean all day – and a large part of the night. We got up at six in the morning, worked throughout the day, and got to bed at half past one the next morning. We (that is, Naomi, her Dad, and I) got new bits of trim attached to the car, added a release cable for the boot, re-did the doors so the speakers looked like they were supposed to be there (instead of tacked on as an afterthought), installed the remote door openers, polised the trim, repainted the wiper arms, and Naomi’s dad changed the driveshaft oil seal and refilled the gearbox with oil. Part of the driveshaft was a bit worn, so he wasn’t sure how long that fix would last.

On Sunday we packed all our stuff into the car, said our farewells, and set off on the long drive back to Calgary. About eighty kilometres out of PG the engine started to get very noisy, and then it started clunking and jumping out of gear. So we pulled off into a rest area and had a look under the car. There was a lot of oil dripping from it, so I guessed that the oil seal had probably broken again – and perhaps more. So we phoned Naomi’s parents, but we couldn’t get much reception (and Naomi’s Dad was out in the bush going hunting, so he had even worse reception). But then a guy drove out of a side road and said he’d seen us there earlier and thought that if we were still there when he got back he’d see if we needed help, and offered to give us a lift back to PG. So we accepted his offer and climbed into his truck. He’d just been hunting, so lying between the front seats was a rifle and a shotgun, and I couldn’t help thinking that in the UK you’d hesitate to accept a lift from someone who had guns lying around in his car! Anyway, he gave us a lift back to Naomi’s parents and wouldn’t accept any money from us, and we started to look for some way to get to Calgary.

We needed to get back before 11am, because that’s when the movers were coming to pack up all our stuff we were sending to the UK. The bus was reasonably cheap, but it wouldn’t get us back until 12.30, so that was no good. We found a place we could hire a car, but it was expensive to rent, and didn’t include unlimited milage, so it would have cost about $700 plus fuel to get to Calgary. Then we looked at flights, but they cost even more – about $850. And then one of the car companies which had said they had no cars called back and said they had a minivan (a people carrier) which we could rent for $29 a day with unlimited milage. Naomi checked twice that it was really that cheap because it sounded too good to be true, but that was the price.

So we moved all our luggage out of our Golf and into Naomi’s mum’s car, drove over to the airport (where the rental place was), and signed all the forms, and discovered that it was actually $22 per day, not $29, and that the person behind the desk knew Naomi. Then we went out to look for the car we’d hired, fully expecting it to be an old banger, as they were letting us rent it because it was about to be auctioned – although I didn’t understand why that meant we could rent it cheap. We walked up and down the lines of vehicles but couldn’t find anything really old, so Naomi pressed the ‘horn’ button on the remote, and a really new Chrysler Uplander responded. It’s the biggest ‘car’ I’ve ever driven – it made me feel North American to be driving it! – and it had six cup holders for the front two seats, traction control, cruise control, a trip computer and electric everything. And then while we were driving home Naomi discovered that it also had a DVD player in the roof!

We took it in turns to drive home. At least, that was the plan. I started off with the first two hour shift, and drove us to Jasper, where we planned to fill up with petrol. But all the petrol stations were closed, so we had to keep going. Naomi took over at that point, and I tilted my seat right back and fell asleep for an hour or so. We stopped next to the waterfall from the previous blog entry, but it was difficult to photograph because it was too dark even for long exposures, so we had to use the car’s headlights. A bit further on we stopped at another petrol station, but it was closed too. I switched back to driving since I was now feeling nice and awake, and we drove to Lake Louise. Their petrol station was also closed, so we kept going, since Banff was sure to have an open petrol station. When we got to Banff though, the car’s guage was saying we had more than enough fuel to get to Calgary, and Naomi was sleeping, so I just kept going. We finally got back to Calgary (about 750km from PG) on a single tank of fuel, at about half past four in the morning.

And now the movers have packed our stuff, and I picked up our passports and Naomi’s visa from the post office, so we’re nearly ready to go back to the UK in three days time. I’m starting to get quite excited!